Call for the 2021 Future Earth Australia National Ten Year Strategy Thematic Focus

The Future Earth Australia secretariat commits a significant proportion of its activities each year to a thematic focus chosen by its members. These themes are intended to have wide relevance and long-term benefits to members as a collective activity, and show leadership in the areas of Future Earth Australia’s comparative advantage.  This process has resulted in the completion of the Urban Transformation Strategy in 2019, and has driven the Oceans and Coasts strategy now underway in 2020.

These ten year strategies are steered by an appointed expert working group, and informed by a bottom up, national consultation process undertaken by the Future Earth Australia secretariat. 

Each theme is selected with reference to: 

  • its importance for and ability to enable integration of the Sustainable Development Goals, and
  • its importance for sustainability research, policy and innovation in the Australian context 

Future Earth Australia is now opening the call for our 2021 thematic focus.

The call process is as follows:

Step 1: The Future Earth Australia secretariat invites all financial member organisations, to propose short descriptions of possible thematic focus topics

Step 2: At the next Steering Committee meeting, the Future Earth Australia Steering Committee will prioritise these proposals in a shortlist and request a fuller proposal

Step 3: The full proposal form will be sent to the lead authors of shortlisted focus topics

Step 4: At the final 2020 Steering Committee meeting, the Future Earth Australia Steering Committee will formally assess the full proposals against our pathways to impact criteria and elect the thematic focus for 2021.

For a proposal to be considered we require one-two paragraphs, explaining the thematic focus, and showing the relevance to Future Earth Australia’s mission and objectives (of which can be found here: https://www.futureearth.org.au/about-us).

Proposals should be emailed to futureearthaustralia@science.org.au.

Note: The deadline for submission of proposals has been extended to the 23rd of September. 

If you have any queries around this process, please contact us at futureearthaustralia@science.org.au